To read this book, start with

Entry 1 (1972)

There are a thousand different ways of being. I knew that and yet occasionally wondered if maybe there really was only one right way. Bu...

Entry III.3 (1992)

There was someone new.  This didn’t even remotely please me.  I knew his name.  Though we hadn’t had conversations so far. I watched his anger—its ebb and flow.  Because at that moment he couldn’t be in charge of safety, I had to be.  I monitored his anger to know when I had to take a pill to help me restrain his desire to be abusive, self-abusive, in response to his rage.

I knew that this particular set of circumstances was anything but static. I longed for the day when I discovered that there would not be another to follow him.


* * * * * * *


L’Chaim.


* * * * * * *


“That bitch wrote an entire book about us.”


“Ah, what does it mean?  What does it mean?”


“It means it’s been very unpleasant inside here most of the day.”


* * * * * * *


“There appears to be a distinct amount of dissatisfaction in the air tonight,” I said to myself thoughtfully.  “I wonder what it’s about.”


It could certainly have been related to my inability to take a dump the entire day.  But I doubted it.  The sight of those little nickel sized turds floating in the toilet bowl, one per sitting, were distinctly disturbing.  In fact, I would have preferred not to mention them at all except that they, one at a time, were such a concrete example of a disturbance.


I hated rummaging around in my mind looking for the trouble.  This was nothing new.  It was like sorting through dirty laundry before it’s washed. Definitely, the down side of the process.


* * * * * * *


At some point, I stated feeling the anger process overtake me.  So, I went to take a pill that would rob my body of excess energy in 45 minutes.  While I waited from the relative safety of assistance on the way, I probed those angry feelings.


Quickly, I began having visions of what hurtful, angry things could be done with my body.  It was tiring but nothing new.  Various kinds of hurts from knives to ropes to guns to irons to scratches to razor blades. I stopped feeling and realized that the process of thinking of violence was in itself anesthetizing.  Suddenly, the actual thinking process made sense to me in a new way.  Memories would begin to surface, and the troups would use violent fantasies as both a way not to feel or remember but still act out of the memory.


* * * * * * *


OH STOP.  IT’S GETTING ENTIRELY TOO DEEP FOR ME.  (Can’t you appreciate a little personal insight?)  HARDLY.